Entertainment News - Bits and Pieces

ABC's "Commander-In-Chief" is sliding in the ratings. Despite starting off hot and notwithstanding the Golden Globe award won by its star Geena Davis, the series isn't holding onto the audience that the network had hoped for.

The series' downturn has industry insiders wondering whether its primary cause is the regime change that occurred behind the scenes after only six episodes were completed. Series creator and executive producer Rod Lurie was replaced as showrunner by veteran TV producer Steven Bochco, reportedly to quell ABC's concerns over production delays.

This was basically Hollywood's attempt to "prime" voters for a Hillary candidacy. It was also - like "The West Wing" - a chance for the Left-wing moonbat caucus to indulge in their fantasies of what it would be like if they controlled Washington.

I have never watched this show, but my guess is that a lot of people tuned in because of the novelty of the premise. While it will still probably have a following among the "anti-Bush" contingency, it looks like most viewers have had a look at the train wreck and have "moved on" to shows more worthy of their time.

Drudge proclaims "Brokeback Mountain" to be the number one movie in America. Of course, that was on Wednesday, when most people with actual lives are too busy to go to the movies. And its $735,000 take for the day was 40% less than Monday's earnings (which was $1,236,425). Forty-one days in the theaters and all it has mustered is $33 million. Contrast that with "The Chronicles Of Narnia" which had the same release date and has earned $265 million domestically ($586M if you throw in the overseas box office gross).

Now Variety is predicting that it could get to number two for this weekend. Big whoop. It garners a cache of Golden Globes this week and the best it will do is Number Two? Again, I haven't seen the movie, but then neither has most of America. Not surprisingly it seems like the media is going to great lengths to convince people that this is a film that an audience outside of an independant film festival would enjoy. I'll take a pass.

Turns out that digital music downloads have become a $1.1 billion dollar business. Do you think Napster is kicking themselves now that they've realized that people are actually willing to pay to download a song that they can't get out of their heads or cherry-pick their favorite tracks off an album? And they would have avoided all that litigation, too. Didn't mom tell them it's not nice to steal? Gotta give Steve Jobs a lot of credit for coming up with iTunes.

And lastly, we mourn the passing of R&B legend Wilson Pickett who died yesterday at the age of 64. Yes, that's right before there were "The Blues Brothers" and "The Commitments" there were pioneers like Pickett. Most famous for belting out such tunes as "In The Midnight Hour" and "Mustang Sally", he died of a heart attack.

R.I.P.

Posted by: Gary at 09:00 AM | Comments (2) | Add Comment
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